"Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her own hands." Proverbs 14:1

May 7, 2011

Chaos on the coffee table...

If you heard shouts of jubilation in the distance this past Thursday evening at precisely 5:18, that was the Wilbur family declaring the week of standardized testing officially over.Allow me to present a small taste of the type of questions found on these tests.Here we have two pictographs for your analysis:

This first one above is entitled: The Week Before Testing.Each cock-eyed book and paper represents one unit of the homeschooling mother’s lost sanity as she scrambles to get things done before setting it all aside for a week of tedious and tiresome tests.Each piece of garbage seen in the pictograph represents five units.The fish filter box needed two days earlier for submitting a rebate represents two units, and the fishing hat represents five because it doesn’t even belong to the mother.All other non-essential items represent three units of lost sanity.Given the information presented in the pictograph, please answer the following: How does the family survive with a mother whose Command Central looks like that?

This second pictograph is entitled: Finito.The standardized tests have been administered, and the day afterward spent restoring life to whatever we call normal around here.The garbage has disappeared, the books and school papers put away.The little round box that holds spelling words (removed from our walls for the sake of honest testing) has even been given a paint treatment.The coffee represents twenty-five units of restored sanity, and ten for each bottle of nail polish.Given this information as well as the absence of chaos in this pictograph, and comparing it with the previous one, please answer the following: How long will it take before the coffee table looks that frightening again?